Devon & Cornwall Lib Dems have selected Brian Blake as their candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections on November 15th. Brian is an excellent candidate, having served for 31 years in the Police Service across the region in both counties, finishing his career as a Detective Chief Inspector.

After retiring from the Police, Brian worked for 13 years for the Ministry of Defence, involving personnel vetting of military, NATO and UK Government employees working abroad.

He is the only person to have announced their candidacy to have experience of serving in the Police, and worked under former Devon and Cornwall Police Chief Constable and Liberal Parliamentary candidate, John Alderson, who pioneered community policing.

The field looks to be packed and will be hotly contested, with a number of independent candidates throwing their hats into the ring alongside the established parties.

We will be using Connect’s Virtual Phone Bank (VPB) system to help us canvass the geographically largest Police area in England at nearly 4,000 square miles. So if you are able to help with phone canvassing from anywhere in the UK, or can help with knocking on doors or delivering, please do get in touch with Glyn Ley on 01803 411816 or email [email protected].

12 Comments

It is October 2nd, the elections are on November 15th. No matter how good a candidate he is, the ‘campaign’ is already almost over. Does no one in the Lib Dems take responsibility for the fiasco of how these elections have been handled by the party?

If I lived in Devon & Cornwall I’d want to know whether he planned to reinstate the traffic policing unit. Following its disbandment, the death rate on D&C roads has recently risen by a quarter. With people nearly four times more likely to be killed by motorists than by murderers, this ought to be at least SOME kind of priority. Alas, on a very poorly written website, Blake does not mention his opinion on this at all – though there is a lot of vague stuff about “vision”.

My understanding is that Brian Blake is not intending to visit the Regional Conference in November, which, I would have thought might have given him a much needed publicity boost. Glyn Ley, if comment in the media is to be believed, the campaigns for Police Commissioner are rather unlikely to “heat up” at all, with 18% turnout being predicted. I think that may be optimistic.

@Tim13 I am unsure whether Brian will be attending Regional Conference, but as it is the week after the election (on November 24th & 25th), the publicity boost wouldn’t do him too much good anyway!

A low turnout is expected, but to be honest that is all the more reason for putting everything into it that you can – if fewer people than normal are voting, every vote you achieve swings the result closer in your favour. With a concerted team effort we could well pull off a result. Time for action…

Churches Together in Dawlish and District hosts a public meeting before national elections and referendums as an opportunity to questions the candidates or discuss the issues. Churches Together is hosting a question time meeting for all the candidates for Police & Crime Commissioner on Monday 12th November at The Strand Centre, The Strand, Dawlish at 7.30.

We expect this to draw the public from Newton Abbot and Teignmouth, though we do not have any idea of how many will attend.

We do hope that in your busy schedule you will be able to attend.

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